Time-honoured Teacher's Day practice giving more parents pause

Gift or no gift? That was the quandary facing many mainland parents ahead of Teacher's Day yesterday.

Explaining the problem, one mother in Beijing said she received a phone call from her husband on Monday asking whether they should prepare gifts for the teachers of their four-year-old daughter at her public kindergarten in Dongcheng district.

The father heard that other parents were buying gifts, and was worried that the teachers might think less of their daughter if they did not follow suit. But the mother had her own concerns.

"I feel bad about the practice. I don't think we should do this. It is ethically unacceptable," she said, declining to be named.

There were four teachers in their daughter's class. If a gift cost 500 yuan (HK$629), that would mean shelling out 2,000 yuan, she said.

But the young mother's biggest headache was not money. Due to her busy work schedule, she'd had very little contact with the teachers and knew nothing about their personal backgrounds or interests. Even if she did approve of teachers' presents, she had no idea what to give them.